Peri-Urban Permaculture On The Basalt Plains

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Gallery

Here you can see an overview of life on the farm, or view the slideshow at bottom of the page.

In December we purchased two Angus cross heifers – with the hope of breeding them when they get a bit older. Here’s Ellen with one year old Stella.

Wild weather along the basalt plains

Even though the Melton area has low rainfall, the wildlife on the farm includes a number of frog species.

Here’s our major project – repair the leaking dam!

Maize, or Corn, is planted densely, as the pollen from one plant, fertilizes the cob-silks on neighbouring plants, ala wind pollenation.

Our cherished old school maize variety, ‘Kaanga-Ma’, just setting flowers

The ‘Mobile Chook Palace’, under construction – now built and inhabited by our new flock of Isa Browns.

Happy to report soil sample from the orchard did not detect chemical residues such as the infamous DDT & Dieldrin, so widely used in orchards around the world until recent times.

Chickens in the wild (Jungle Fowl) would naturally range great distances, so we recreate this as best we can by regularly moving the chooks to fresh patch, before returning again, sometimes months later.

Using portable electric netting, chooks are moved regularly to greener pastures, providing constant access to fresh greens and bugs, with improved hygiene, free and even manure distribution, and greater stimulation. Sufficient recovery time between visits means plants and their root systems develop to their fullest potential. Cool eh!

Unfortunately, roosters and suburbia aren’t compatible, here, we run Rooster Rescue, so they can enjoy life on the farm for awhile. Contact us if you have a rooster that needs a home.

The green green grass of our middle paddock. How green is our middle paddock. And other literary references.